[mcmama]

I have a young friend who is about to be confirmed. He is in a large parish, and his confirmation class has about 50 kids.

Part of the preparation for confirmation was an overnight retreat. During this retreat, apparently a group of "popular" kids hazed some of the sleeping students - drawing things on them, gluing their eyes shut, dumping flour and water on them, etc. Those who were not asleep were afraid to fall asleep, and were not in real great shape the next day.

My young friend tells me that the adult who was supervising this gathering was "asleep" when all this was going on. The priest had been there at the beginning, but once lights were supposed to be out, the priest went back to the rectory. As a result of this nonsense, this boy does not want to have much to do with religion class, CYO, or anything at church beyond attending Mass with his family. His mom is divorced, and senses that the pastor takes a dim view of anything she says. She doesn't know who else to take it up with, but she is not the only mom who is upset by this.

I remember quite a few crazy things going on at overnight youth retreats when I was growing up, but nothing like this. It's not my parish, or I would be giving someone a hard time! I would like to encourage my young friend and his mom to continue in the life of the church - suggestions about how they should handle this? Anyone involved in CYO have incidents like this occur? How did you handle this?